SpiceJet airlines faces ransomware attack impacting its morning flight departures

Hundreds of SpiceJet airlines passengers were struck at various airports due to a ransomware attack that impacted today’s morning flight departures.

SpiceJet tweeted: “Certain SpiceJet systems faced an attempted ransomware attack last night that impacted and slowed down morning flight departures today. Our IT team has contained and rectified the situation and flights are operating normally now.”

Passengers are questioning SpiceJet on Twitter over their claims of resumption of normal operations. However, the officials are not providing details over the technical glitch, stating that they are unable to track the development.

In 2020 as well, SpiceJet was reportedly affected by a security flaw that exposed private details of more than 1.2 million passengers, including flight information. The breach was by a security researcher who gained access to one of SpiceJet's systems by brute-forcing an easily-guessable password. The system contained an unencrypted backup file with private details of over 1.2 million passengers, including details such as name, phone number, email address, date of birth, and flight information.

The airline has a fleet of 91 aircraft, out of which 13 are Max planes and 46 are older versions of Boeing 737 aircraft. SpiceJet Chairman and Managing Director Ajay Singh said, “We will continue to add new products and new routes to our net-work this year. SpiceClub, our wonderful loyalty program launched our co-branded credit card recently and we hope to start a broad-band internet service on board our aircraft soon.”